Breakfast With the Chief of Police

Somewhere in New Mexico - January 26, 2007

We pull into a small town in New Mexico. There is a small diner open for breakfast. We walk over an icy four-lane highway and go into the restaurant.


There are four patrons who warmly welcome us and ask us to sit at their table close to the heater. One of them is C_____, who is dressed as a working cowboy with jeans, a flannel shirt, and a faded jacket. We speak to them and exchange life stories. They all live in town. One-by-one, everyone leaves except C_____ and the cook who is the owner.

C_____ appears to be about 50 years old. C_____ asks me about my Pink Floyd T-shirt and expresses a love for the early Floyd albums. We discuss rock concerts we have attended. He ticks of eight or nine groups. I mention a few including the free “love-in” nude "flower power" 60’s concert we attended with Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary in San Francisco.

We begin to discuss Ken Kesey’s “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”. We both hint at a brief love of hallucinogens terminated reluctantly by impending maturity.

C_____ tells us about his trips to the Mediterranean on an aircraft carrier. I tell him about seeing the Pacific in a C-124. The cook comes out and tells me that C_____ is the Chief of Police and has been making several movies with a Hollywood film crew.

C_____ explains to us that there are 180 people in his town and it’s pretty boring. He says most of the people here are ranchers and haven’t really adopted big city attitudes. They have computers and DSL but are very old-fashioned in many ways. Until three years ago he was the elected sheriff of the entire county.

He has been working with film crews doing remakes of “The Hitcher”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Birds”. The Hitcher is one of my favorite all-time movies. He tells me to look out for some surprising plot changes but offers no plot-spoilers.

We pay the bill and say goodbye. I tell him I seldom have an opportunity to discuss my history of drug use at breakfast with a Police Chief. He says that he would just as soon not have his constituents know about his.

Mrs. Phred and I fill the RV with gas on the way out of town. A blacksmith is shoeing a horse in the snow-covered convenience store parking lot. We both agree that breakfast in small-town America often provides interesting experiences and memories.

Fleece and Release

Kenai River, Alaska - July 12, 2006

I must have had a feeling when I put on my Pink Floyd shirt this morning to get on the boat. Syd died yesterday at 60. Pink Floyd won't be getting back together in this world.

after the service when you're walking slowly to the car
and the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air
you hear the tolling bell
and touch the silk in your lapel
and as the tear drops rise to meet the comfort of the band
you take her frail hand
and hold on to the dream

We had another fisherman on our small boat named Otto yesterday. He talked incessantly as we fished for king salmon. He's on the cell phone six times. He whistles when he runs out of things to say. Otto has 12 kids. He tells about finding his naked wife in the snow with blue nipples after the last one. He warmed her up in the shower. I'm not surprised at her behavior after sitting next to him for six hours. We caught nothing. I snagged several rocks and logs. It’s very cold when the boat moves.


Danny caught and released a seven pound king salmon. We kept a two pound rainbow trout for dinner. You only get to keep one king a day and we were hoping for a 90 pounder later in the morning.


Last night the moose came back in bright daylight and I snapped way too many pictures. Since Carol is not here I get to drink as much bourbon as I can handle every night. I woke at 3AM as the sun rose. At five we headed downriver again in search of Chinook (king salmon).

I hook a big one...about 50 pounds...I work him slowly to the boat over a 30 minute period...he looks at me and dives under the boat, circling the prop and breaking the line....by the time we are back to shore he has grown to 75 pounds....I think he may be a new world record by the time I return to Tampa..


We leave Soldatna and drive down the peninsula to Nimilchik to watch several hundred people digging clams on the 28 foot low tide…the tide here is only six feet less than the Bay of Fundy. We continue to Anchor Point and talk to Captain Tim about our Halibut charters…he is a nice man and gives us a 3 pound chunk of fresh Halibut for dinner tonight.


We are checked in to our new home in Homer... The view from the front porch is spectacular

There is a Billy the Kid 24-hour movie TV extravaganza going on here Billy has been the subject of more movies than any other human.

The wind died down today and we and we went out again 20 miles into Cook’s Inlet on a small boat. Danny loved it…we are shipping 100 pounds of flash-frozen, vacuum-packed halibut back to his house. He just called me out on the cliff in back of the Inn to show me the sea otters working the clams a few yards way at high tide. A bald eagle buzzes the cliff about once an hour but I can’t get my camera cycled up quickly enough for a photo. The tide here varies by 28 feet over a six hour period. Just pulling up four pound weights from 200 feet down for a bait check is a workout. When the tide is ripping they don’t hold on the bottom. I catch the biggest halibut taken on the boat both days. One is 75 pounds. It’s a workout to bring him up. Limit two.

A black bear trotted by the back door last night only ten feet away. My camera was off. On the trip back we spent an hour watching fly-fishing anglers catching 15 pound sockeye salmon. They take a fish every four casts on average. The bag limit is three. Last year an emergency order lifted the limit to six as too many fish entered the river. The plane left Alaska at 9:40 PM. We gradually flew into darkness as we headed south…the cloud cover was broken by brightly illuminated snow-capped mountain peaks. I arrived home at noon today.

A bumper sticker observed on the back of an Alaska fishing Captain’s pickup truck:

The Tourism Run Is In
Fleece and Release